Dean Stephens has a strong understanding of the physician marketplace and its business challenges. While working for Deloitte Consulting during the ‘90s, he helped hospital systems acquire thousands of medical practices.
"In the process of trying to build managed care organizations and integrated delivery networks, I saw the pitfalls and the opportunities," says Stephens, who is now CEO of health information provider Healthline.
One of those opportunities is the application of technology by primary care practices in treating patients.
"We're seeing movement from kludgy interfaces to user-friendly environments," he explains. "Physicians are going to find that the data they've been compiling — especially unstructured notes in medical records or case note histories — can be mined, insights can be drawn from it, and patients can then be put into risk pools that can be managed more effectively."
He predicts doctors will become more closely attuned to their patients. They will come to understand them in the context of a cohort of people who have shared medical issues and a common interest in how they maintain their lifestyle.
To help move that process along, Healthline is developing "navigator apps" that can be personalized to a patient's condition. The first, geared toward breast cancer patients, will be launched in the second quarter of this year.
"We've identified moments in between care path milestones — starting at diagnosis, then going into treatment, post-treatment, remission and end stage — where there are information gaps," Stephens says. "The patient app will say, 'Here you are in your journey, and these are the information needs you will have at each point along the way.'"
For example, the app could be used to help a patient formulate questions for her oncologist based on her own personal experience.
"The marketplace knows that 30 percent of the treatment decisions made by oncologists are wrong. Our hope is that the navigator app will be one element in helping the oncologist and patient collaborate and get to a better treatment decision," Stephens adds.
Aside from consumer apps, Healthline is also working on clinical search tools for use at the point of care. That technology will be rolled out later this year.
"We think that search for clinical information can get a lot better at the physician practice level and it can be done for free," Stephens says. "We're a technology company at heart, so we're going to deploy our search platform through the EHRs that practices use."
The launch model calls for a search environment within the EHR. Like many free apps, Healthline plans to support its product with advertising revenue.
"People don't mind going to Google to search for information even though an ad may pop up on the side or at the top of the screen along with the result," Stephens says. "Why not do that for physicians? EHR companies want to find ways to better compete and serve small practices."
